Pine Hill Cemetery . Com

We are now on line with our own web site at http://pinehillcemetery.com/ . I am building the site and it has been a real challenge. During the past several weeks I have been having all sorts of problems with my computer with a little problem called locking up and shutting down. Makes it a little tough to download things for uploading to my new web site but I managed. Still haven't figured out how to make the mail work but I will soon, I'm sure. Usually I deal with this locking up type of problem by buying a new computer but this time I decided to tough it out and figure it out for myself. We have our own guru that handles our company computer but this one is my problem. I figured that it probably revolved around around my extensive photography collection in the computer. That is where I started as I organized everything I had. 4 years worth of photos takes up a lot of room. I went through every photo I had in the computer and found that about 60% needed to be deleted. The remainder fit on three CD-R's and are now all nice and neatly organized in files. I actually can find what I am looking for now. My interest got piqued on cameras again and I have decided to buy a new one. My old one doesn't work very well anymore and about 75% of the time I have to pound it on something to make it turn on.

This is my new dream camera

My next step was to take a look at programs and I found a bunch that I didn't even know I had. I got rid of most of my old programs. I did all of this deleting and removing and nothing really happened. When I was doing my photo's my computer would shut down about two or three times per session. Two days ago I found a thing on my desktop called "Recycle Bin" and I emptied it. Don't think I have ever emptied it. Made a world of difference in my speed. Tonight I got rid of all of things housed under "Internet options" and my computer now operates at the speed of light. What a difference. Been fun and I have learned a whole bunch from it. Wonder where the money is going to come for the camera?

Getting back to our new web site, it should be fun to keep tabs on what is happening. Lots of stories to tell and lots of photos to show off. We're going to leave stories and photos for the most part open to anyone that wants to post them. This blog is my forum and I will try and remember it, otherwise I could dominate the entire web site. Too many photo's, too many stories, too little time. Keep us in mind as we keep building the site. Still a little bit rough around the edges but it gets better. Next month we will post our second story in our series of interesting people titled "Santa Clause is dead!"

Growing Grass the Ted Way

"What is so important about watering?" you ask. "Everything"! Here at our old cemetery we are slowly running out of room for graves and so we get creative about getting more grave sites so we grow them. Our cemetery, in 1843 was laid out in a grid or grave plots holding 12 to 16 graves with each row two plots wide or 40' wide and about 300 feet long, bounded on each side by a road called a carriage path. Today cemeteries are laid out with roads hundreds of feet apart as they found that there was little use for such close roads and it was a maintenance headache. We are slowly removing those roads and converting them to grave sites and prolonging the life of our cemetery. Over the years these carriage paths have been pounded down, first by the wagons and carriages that traversed them and now by trucks and cars. First we must bring them up to the grade of the surrounding land so they no longer look like roads. We use the excess dirt and gravel from excavating graves for burials to do this. After the gravel is leveled and compacted we bring in about 6" of topsoil, level, compact, seed and cover the future graves with mulch. We use Scotts seed and their mulch product which contains more seed, starter fertilizer and chewed up paper dyed green. The mulch provides a very important benefit in that it holds the moisture and also provides shade for the new germinating seeds.

The first picture is day #5 after planting and it is a huge relief when you see that. The first grass seeds germinate and push up through the earth in 5 days if you do everything correct. If you don't see them in five days it probably means you have not been keeping things wet and the grass seeds are dying. That happens to me a lot because of the demands of the job and sometimes we just can't get back to water. New grass requires to or three trips back, with the garden hose, each day to be successful. Sometimes we have to rely on mother nature to supply water to the newly seeded graves but rarely does that happen. Just because the little shoots of green show you have grass growing does not mean you can stop watering. More seeds, different varieties and depth are still germinating and still need just as much water for at least another week. The second picture is of the same area but on day four and you can see in the background that we are also working on the continuation of that road for more graves. This area will hold about fifty graves and the next area will hold about 150 graves. It took about 30 minutes to water this road 2 to 3 times a day. The next road will require about an hour and 15 minutes each time. Time to get my grandson Sam on the payroll for some money towards extra games for his Wii. Thought you might be interested!

The secret to this process is water, water and more Water!!! You don't want to flood those little seeds but if you don't keep them damp, they DIE. Our topsoil is Brown when dry but it is Dark Brown when it is damp. We keep it Dark Brown and we always send it to bed at night dark brown cause overnight is when the grass grows and to grow it needs water. My last tip is do not fertilize, do not put down a crab grass killer. A little bit of starter fertilizer [the bag must say STARTER Fertilizer] is OK but fertilizers usually have other ingredients such as weed killer [Scotts Plus for example] and this kills the tiny, tender shoots of grass. Read the bag!! So ends Ted's secretes to a new lawn!

We get our vaults from a company called Wilbert Vault out of Springfield. We order them one by one, as the need arises, and when they come with them they place them in the evacuated hole for us. The driver with this one arrived to early and we were still just defrosting the ground to be able to dig. He wanted to know where he could leave it until we were ready for it. I told him "anywhere along the road as we are not using the area for burials". He chose this spot, on top of a dirt pile to be funny, I assume. Looks kinda like the New Orleans area after a flood. The driver that came later to set the vault was not very amused as he had a really tough time getting it off the pile.

Haunted...Westfield's Cemetery?

"Westfield - Pine Hill Cemetery - Something haunts the back hill of this cemetery. During the day visitors have reported a mans voice in the woods, and the feeling of being watched. At night, the watchful feeling changes to one of absolute unreasonable terror. Even going on the public street that runs right beside the hill will cause this...even some people who live on that street have complained of feeling uneasy, as if something is watching out for that portion of the cemetery and will not tolerate ANYONE trespassing. A few reports of rocks being thrown at cars passing that area have also surfaced, but are rare."
I live in Westfield MA, last night around one, my friend and I were driving by the cemetery. We had both read this a few months prior, so we thought we'd check it out for ourselves. We walked in the opening to the far left side and made our way toward the back of the cemetery. About the third or fourth path you can take into the cemetery we took to look at this huge tombstone that caught our attention toward the center. Not five steps past that grave, my feet froze to the ground and a wave of utter uneasiness came over me. My heart jumped and I looked at my friend. He was looking back at me and said he felt cold and his arms were numb. We didn't stay long to investigate, we kind of felt like we were being shoved out extremely unwanted. both of us were numb but it was a beautiful night. this feeling stayed with us until we got off of the main road and into our car. When I opened the door I swear I saw someone walking along the fence but when I looked again it was gone.

This is a story I found on the shadow lands website http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/ghost348.html. Found it interesting but totally untrue as no one has ever told us about experiencing “unreasonable terror” while they visited and never a report about someone throwing rocks at cars. We have a couple of Wickens for friends and they has been very involved with the cemetery, including one who has worked for us on several occasions. They has passed on a few stories of their own. One of those stories surround an area in a corner called the steps that a ghost named Tom inhabits and he is very mischievous. Another tale surrounds a large monument that makes you feel better if you hug one of the pillars. We have found the remnants of séances being held in the cemetery such as ouija boards and candles. Probably just kids that have managed to scare themselves.

I have had a phone call from a lady who told me that her husband is buried in Pine Hill and there is a lady that is buried in a plot next to him and is trying to get into his grave. She wanted me to do something about it. I told her I would work on chasing her off?? Another phone call was from a lady whose husband was dead and buried in our cemetery and he is always coming back to her house. When he was alive they had a priest that lived with them but he died shortly after her husband. The priest also comes back to the house. Neither one of them talk to her but she knows they are there because she can hear them arguing. I told her I didn’t know what I could do but when she told me she was a Catholic I suggested she contact her priest and see about getting an exorcism of the house. I guess it solved her problems. I borrow the picture on the right from the following blog. Hope they don't mind. http://mazurland.typepad.com/myweblog/2005/09/exorcism.html

The nature of the jobs is that I spend a lot of time in the cemetery after dark.[yuh- ha -ha –ha]. Locking gates after nightfall is the main reason[oh-we-yuh]. Halloween night we spend a couple of hours patrolling for vandals and sometimes there are incidents that need to be investigated such as: campfires; strange happenings reported by neighbors; lovers being located inside. It really isn’t very spooky except for the lights. We have a major street that goes by on one side and the lights go dancing off the stones. For years I noticed one stone, up high in the cemetery that was orange in color and only glowed about once a month or so. I was about ready to throw in the towel and admit that some things can’t be explained. That would be major for me as I absolutely do not believe in the occult. Finally I realized it only occurred during full moons. The moon had to be in the right position for me to see it and a big black stone that was slightly tilted backward was reflecting it. Whew!

The really scary thing that happens is when we have a couple of fox hunting at night and keeping track of each other by howling. Their howling sounds like two babies screaming and it unnerves the neighbors a bit.

The only thing that makes me nervous is watching out for Andrew Cunanan types that want to pop me for my pickup. Happy dreams!